


Narrative Elements

by KChasm



Series: Superimpose [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 18:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10599603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChasm/pseuds/KChasm
Summary: Owain loves Stories.(In continuity with "Superimpose," but nothing here you have to have read that to understand.)





	

He was a child when his mother began telling him Stories. Less than a child—young enough that the stream of words passed over him and all he understood was the singsong tone of her voice and the occasional illustration in color. A knight on horseback, battling some ferocious beast. A king and queen, hand in hand. Witches and dragons and treasure rediscovered.

The world opened further to him as he grew into childhood and began to understand that the Stories were more than image and cadence. The knight was on a quest, and the monster had terrorized the countryside, rending would-be heroes under its claws. The king and queen were actually a prince and princess, the princess a fair maiden who had been locked away in a silver cage and the prince the one who had saved her. The witches drew curses, and the dragons helped, and sometimes hindered, and the treasure meant _happily ever after_.

He heard those Stories night after night, listened as his mother read books full of well-worn tales, and if he had been a different child he might have grown tired of them, but he loved them instead.

* * *

Stories make _sense_. They have order to them, patterns that can be picked out before they ever start, if you know them well enough. The hero, called to adventure. The quest, given by order or circumstance. The path from then to there, beset with obstacles. Companions to trust with your heart, and charity and goodness repaid.

And in the end, the monster falls.

And the hero—

* * *

Owain has memorized all the steps, has practiced his lines and watched the scenes play out beneath his eyelids from the first Lucina let him into her impossible plan. This is how he knows it will be:

It will be raining, first. It will have to be—some unnatural storm, to herald the final cry of twisted fate as a new future teeters upon the cusp. He will be standing tall alongside his father, bonded by blood and determination, staring down the fell dragon as he was never able to alone—

The attack will come for his father, of course, the greater threat to the dragon's machinations, but _Owain will be there_ and he will twist himself into the path, step inward, parry, and Missiletainn will _shatter_ and the blow will come through but it will be enough, it will be _enough_ , even as he falls, for his father to deal the final blow and seal away the fell beast once and for all.

And afterward, as he lies cradled in his father's arms, a content smile to his face, the hilt of a trusted blade will slip from his loosening hand, and a future that should never have come to be will see its own silent passing.

* * *

And then Owain breaks his ankle outside the Dragon's Table, too late for a healer, and they make him sit the whole thing out. He's far enough to watch with safety as the altar collapses—as Grima awakes—as—

The Shepherds come back without his father, but that makes sense, too. He was never the hero, anyway.


End file.
